Yamaha Education News

Jazz Experience winners from Dumfries play Bull's Head gig

Pictured here: the 'Cheltenham 8' from Dumfries, who won the under-17 section of the Yamaha Jazz Experience competition at Cheltenham Jazz Festival in May 2010, performing their prize gig at top London jazz venue, the Bull's Head jazz club, Barnes on 19 September

An eight-piece ensemble aged 13-17 from the Dumfries Youth Jazz Group (DYJG) travelled to London on Sunday 19 September to play a two-hour gig at the Bull's Head jazz club in Barnes, one of the capital's top jazz venues. The ensemble, the Cheltenham 8, won the gig as the under-17 prize of the Yamaha Jazz Experience Finals 2010 competition, which was held at Cheltenham Jazz Festival in May 2010.

The competition's finals saw nine shortlisted ensembles perform in front of their supporters, jazz festival-goers, the general public and the top jazz musicians and educators who formed the competition's judging panel: Liane Carroll, Peter Ind, Julian Joseph, Richard Michael and Andrea Vicari. The judges had been given the task of selecting one winning ensemble from each age category (under-15, under-17 and under-19) to receive Yamaha vouchers worth £3,000 per ensemble and a prestigious gig in one of London's top jazz venues, Ronnie Scott's the 606 and the Bull's Head in Barnes.

During the interval at the gig, which took place in the Bull's Head's 'Yamaha Room', we asked the ensemble's director, Christine Barbour, about the DYJG, which had produced the winning ensemble.

"We currently run three bands starting from age eight, with about 120 members. We take them if they're keen, even if they can't play anything to start with, and they move up from Band 3 to 2 to 1 as they improve. They all play big band, swing and some jazz classics and everyone has to learn to improvise as well."

Christine went on to explain that all the musicians in Cheltenham 8 play in Band 1, DYJG's top ability band, and were hand-picked for the competition for their improvisation skills.

She continued: "It's quite a learning curve for us all. I'm not a jazz musician but I go to various training sessions and we invite trainers to come to work with us. We've had input from people like Richard Michael, Paul Towndrow and Tommy Smith and the children really enjoy their visits as it inspires them to become better in improvisation."

Preparing for the competition

For the Jazz Experience competition they put the group together and recorded the video in the space of a day! "It felt very rushed," Christine admitted, "and we were pleasantly surprised to get through to the final. Even then we had no idea what the level of competition would be but noticed there were musicians from places like Chetham's School of Music and Junior Guildhall. We are from a very rural part of Dumfries and Galloway, which hadn't really been known for jazz, though we have now produced various young musicians who are going to study jazz at higher levels."

The young musicians performed superbly at the Bull's Head. They had clearly enjoyed the whole process and were very excitied to be playing in a top London jazz club.

Jazz Experience 2011-12

Following the success of the 2010 Jazz Experience competition, Yamaha plans to run the project again, with a teacher training workshop tour for teachers new to jazz in 2011 and the competition for 11-18s in 2012. We asked Christine if sh'd had enough or if she will be entering the competition again in 2012. "Certainly! My only dilemma is xhoosing between various groups that we could put together and we have some particularly promising musicians in the younger section as well. I would also encourage other teachers to give it a go. You're talking to a woman with no background in jazz or jazz improvisation and it's turned into a highly successful event for us!"

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(posted: September 2010)